You may have just used Noise Reduction wrong. It’s not particularly simple.
I did a noise reduction pass. Drag select the dead part before the first note. Effect > Noise Reduction > Profile. Then Effect > Noise Reduction again > 9, 6, 3 > OK.
Then equalization just a bit to get rid of the single room boom (I can forward that).
Then another noise reduction pass duplicating the first process but this time at 6, 6, 3.
What model? That may be the best you can do with that particular setup.
I think I’m hearing hiss from the microphone. The noise is probably too loud to be removed without damaging the audio.
That noise is either generated in the microphone’s preamp or sometimes it gets-in through the USB power from the computer. If if’s coming from the USB power a different computer may be better (or worse). Usually the power supply noise from a computer has a higher pitch, so it’s hard to tell.
Is that the untouched original recording, or did you amplify? If it’s untouched you can’t do much better. If you amplified it (with Audacity) you may be able to get a better signal-to-noise ratio by moving the mic closer to the piano (or by simply re-positioning it). …If you can get a higher signal (without clipping/overloading) you won’t have to amplify as much so the noise will be lower because it won’t be amplified as much either.
I tried to download noisegate to get rid of the initial echo, but Audacity isn’t recognizing it.
A noisegate kills (or reduces) the sound whenever it drops below the threshold. It can sound unnatural and distracting when you hear the noise cut in-and-out. I sometimes hear a noisegate on older movies… I’m not really noticing the background noise but when it suddenly goes dead-silent it sounds like the sound has cut-out and it’s distracting. A noisegate can work OK when you have a very-low level noise that you almost can’t hear anyway. Or, it can work with multi-track recording where other instruments/tracks drown-out the effects of the noisegate on a single instrument/track.
…Piano (or almost any solo voice/ acoustic instrument) can be difficult to record because it’s very dynamic and when it’s quiet there is little or nothing to drown-out the background noise. But usually, the acoustic room noise is the biggest problem. Your main problem seems to be electrical noise.
On your original the piano sound only goes up to about 3000Hz : it should be more like 13000Hz
The frequencies above about 3000Hz are being lost somewhere, that why it sounds muffled, (under-water).
Maybe you’re using a 8000Hz sample-rate when recording, that will lose everything above 4000Hz.
44100Hz is a typical sample-rate for recording of music.
I didn’t edit the original recording in any way except to cut out air/talking at the beginning and the end (I still have a version with that on there because I know the air is important). Distance could definitely be the issue.
It sounds like I’ll have to rerecord everything. Short of building a blanket fort around the piano, can I do anything about background noise (besides turning off the AC, etc).
Maybe an obvious question, but could the fact that my tripod is currently made of a wire hanger and a piece of packing tape impact the sound/contribute to the hissing (I made the mistake of loaning my proper tripod to a friend)?
Only in the sense of having the microphone aimed the wrong way.
All microphones have background noise. It’s your job to get the performer and microphone close enough to each other so the show is way louder than the noise. If the performance is too loud, the digital system will run out and start overloading. There’s a sweet spot.
Build the fort.
Anything you do to suppress echoes and room effect will help.
There are tricks. You can eliminate half of the echoes by placing the microphone against one wall instead of the middle of the room. You can listen and hear a marked improvement over the echoes—but they don’t all go away. If the room is large, the volume will go down and the noise will get worse (comparatively).
